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Of a hundred members and faces that each thing has, I take one, sometimes only to lick it, sometimes to brush the surface, sometimes to pinch it to the bone. I give it a stab, not as wide but as deep as I know how. And most often I like to take them from some unaccustomed point of view.

This last part is unquestionably true. Already he skates into his early chapters from oblique directions, and the tendency becomes even more extreme with the essays of the 1580s. "Of Coaches" begins by talking about authors, goes on to a bit about sneezing, and arrives at its supposed subject of coaches two pages later-only to race off again almost immediately and spend the rest of its time discussing the New World. "Of Physiognomy" comes to the subject of physiognomy in the form of a sudden observation about the ugliness of Socrates twenty-two pages into an essay that (in Donald Frame's English translation) runs only to twenty-eight pages in total. The English writer Thackeray joked that Montaigne could have given every one of his essays the t.i.tle of another, or could have called one "Of the Moon" and another "Of Fresh Cheese": it would have made little difference. Montaigne admitted that his t.i.tles had little obvious connection with the contents-"often they only denote it by some sign." Yet he also said that, if the t.i.tle seems random or the thread of his logic seems lost, "some words about it will always be found off in a corner, which will not fail to be sufficient." The "words in the corner" often hide his most interesting themes. He tucks them into exactly those parts of the text that seem most destructively to be breaking up the flow, muddying the waters and making his arguments impossible to follow.

Montaigne's Essays Essays initially presented itself as a fairly conventional work: a bunch of blossoms plucked from the garden of the great cla.s.sical authors, together with fresh considerations on diplomacy and battlefield ethics. Yet, once its pages were opened, they metamorphosed like one of Ovid's creatures into a freak held together by just one thing: the figure of Montaigne. One could hardly defy convention more comprehensively than this. Not only was the book monstrous, but its only point of unity was the thing that should have been vanishing modestly into the background. Montaigne is the book's ma.s.sive gravitational core; and this core becomes stronger as the book goes on through its subsequent variants, even as it becomes ever more heavily laden with extra limbs, ornaments, baggage, and jumbled body parts. initially presented itself as a fairly conventional work: a bunch of blossoms plucked from the garden of the great cla.s.sical authors, together with fresh considerations on diplomacy and battlefield ethics. Yet, once its pages were opened, they metamorphosed like one of Ovid's creatures into a freak held together by just one thing: the figure of Montaigne. One could hardly defy convention more comprehensively than this. Not only was the book monstrous, but its only point of unity was the thing that should have been vanishing modestly into the background. Montaigne is the book's ma.s.sive gravitational core; and this core becomes stronger as the book goes on through its subsequent variants, even as it becomes ever more heavily laden with extra limbs, ornaments, baggage, and jumbled body parts.

The 1570s were Montaigne's first great writing decade, but the 1580s would be his big decade as an author. The coming ten years doubled the size of the Essays Essays, and took Montaigne from being a nonent.i.ty to being a star. At the same time, the 1580s removed him from his quiet position in rural Guyenne, sent him on a long trip around Switzerland, Germany, and Italy as a feted celebrity, and made him mayor of Bordeaux. They enhanced Montaigne's stature as a public figure as well as a literary one. They ruined his health, exhausted him, and made him a man who would be remembered.

14. Q. How to live? A. See the world

TRAVELS.

THE SUCCESS OF Montaigne's first edition of the Montaigne's first edition of the Essays Essays in 1580 must have changed his way of thinking about life. The acclaim knocked him out of his routine, and perhaps gave him the feeling that it was time to engage with the world again. Although he says little about this in the in 1580 must have changed his way of thinking about life. The acclaim knocked him out of his routine, and perhaps gave him the feeling that it was time to engage with the world again. Although he says little about this in the Essays Essays, it may now have occurred to him that an interesting diplomatic career beckoned, and that the best way into it was a bout of international networking. He was also keen to get away from the domestic constraints of the estate, which could be left in his wife's capable hands. Montaigne had always wanted to travel, so as to discover the "perpetual variety of the forms of our nature." Even as a boy, he had felt a great "honest curiosity" about the world-about "a building, a fountain, a man, the field of an ancient battle, the place where Caesar or Charlemagne pa.s.sed"-everything. Now he imagined walking in the footsteps of his cla.s.sical heroes, while at the same time exploring the variety of the present world, where he could "rub and polish" his brains by contact with strangers.

Another, less glamorous, reason for traveling existed too. From his father, Montaigne had inherited a propensity to attacks of kidney stones. Having seen Pierre literally pa.s.s out from the pain, he was more terrified of this illness than any other. Now, in his mid-forties, he found out for himself what this particular form of torture was like.

Kidney stones form when calcium or other minerals build up in the system and create lumps and crystals which block the flow of urine. They often splinter, creating jagged shards. Whole or split, they must pa.s.s through, and, as they do, they produce a sensation that feels like being sliced open from the inside. They also cause general discomfort around the kidneys, stabbing pains in the abdomen and back, and sometimes nausea and fever. Even once they are pa.s.sed, that is not the end, for they often recur throughout life. In Montaigne's day, they carried a real danger of death each time, either from simple blockage or from infection.

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Today, stones can be broken up using sound waves to make the pa.s.sage easier, but in Montaigne's time one could only hope that the spheres, spikes, needles and burrs would find their own way to the exit. He would try to sluice them out by refraining from urinating for as long as he could, to build up pressure; this was painful and dangerous in itself, but sometimes it worked. He tried other remedies, though he usually distrusted all forms of medicine. Once, he took "Venetian turpentine, which they say comes from the mountains of Tyrol, two large doses done up in a wafer on a silver spoon, sprinkled with one or two drops of some good-tasting syrup." The only effect was to make his urine smell like March violets. The blood of a billy-goat fed on special herbs and wine was supposed to be efficacious. Montaigne tried this, rearing the goat at his estate, but he abandoned the idea on noticing calculi very similar to his own in the goat's organs after it was killed. He did not see how one faulty urinary system could cure another.

The most common remedy for kidney stones was the use of spa waters and thermal baths. Montaigne went along with this too; at least it was a natural method, unlikely to do harm. The spas were often set in attractive environments, and the company was interesting. He tried a couple in France in the late 1570s; the illness returned after each visit, but he was willing to try more. This therefore became another reason to travel, for the resorts of Switzerland and Italy were famous. It had the virtue of being the kind of reason he could easily quote to his wife and friends.

And so, in the summer of 1580, the renowned forty-seven-year-old author left his vines and set off to cure his ailment and see the world, or at least selected areas of the European world. The trip would keep him away until November 1581: seventeen months. He began with trips around parts of France, apparently on business and perhaps collecting instructions for political errands on the journey. It was now that he had his audience with Henri III, and presented him with his Essays Essays. After this he turned east and crossed over into German lands, then towards the Alps and Switzerland, and finally to Italy. Had he had his way, the trip might have been longer and he might have ended up anywhere. At one point, he fancied going to Poland. Instead, he contented himself with the more common goal of Rome-great pilgrimage site for every good Catholic and every Renaissance intellectual.

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Montaigne did not have the luxury of traveling solo, following personal whim alone. He was a n.o.bleman of substance, and was expected to support an unwieldy entourage of servants, acquaintances, and hangers-on, from whom he tried to escape as often as possible. The group included four youngsters who came for the educational experience. One was his own youngest brother, Bertrand de Mattecoulon, still only twenty; the others were the young husband of one of his sisters and a neighbor's teenage son with a friend. As the voyage went on, each of these would peel away to take up various pursuits. The most ill-fated was Mattecoulon, who stayed in Rome to study fencing and there killed a man in a duel; Montaigne had to get him rescued from prison.

Traveling was itself something of an extreme sport at the time, not much less dangerous than dueling. Roads on established pilgrim routes could be good, but others were rough. You always had to be ready to change your plans on hearing reports of plague ahead, or of gangs of highwaymen. Montaigne once altered his route to Rome because of a warning about armed robberies on the road he had intended to take. Some people hired escorts, or traveled in convoy. Montaigne was already in a large group, which helped, but that could attract unwelcome attention too.

There were other irritations. Officials had to be bribed, especially in Italy, which was known for corruption and bureaucratic excess. Throughout Europe, the gates to cities were heavily guarded; you had to arrive with the correct pa.s.sports, travel and baggage permits, plus properly attested letters stating that you had not recently been through a plague area. City checkpoints often issued a pa.s.s to stay at a particular hotel, the proprietor of which had to countersign it. It must have been like traveling in the Communist world at the height of the Cold War, but with greater lawlessness and danger.

Then there were the discomforts of the journey itself. Most traveling was done on horseback. You could go by carriage, but the seats were usually harder on the b.u.t.tocks than saddles. Montaigne certainly preferred to ride. He would buy and sell horses on the way, or hire them for short stretches. River transport was another option, but Montaigne suffered from seasickness and avoided it. In general, riding gave him the freedom he craved; surprisingly, he also found a saddle the most comfortable place to be during a kidney-stone attack.

What he loved above all about his travels was the feeling of going with the flow. He avoided all fixed plans. "If it looks ugly on the right, I take the left; if I find myself unfit to ride my horse, I stop." He traveled as he read and wrote: by following the promptings of pleasure. Leonard Woolf, roaming Europe with his wife over three centuries later, would describe how she too cruised along like a whale sieving the ocean for plankton, cultivating a "pa.s.sive alertness" which brought her a strange mingling of "exhilaration and relaxation." Montaigne was the same. It was an extension of his everyday pleasure in letting himself "roll relaxedly with the rolling of the heavens," as he luxuriously put it, but with the added delight that came from seeing everything afresh and with full attention, like a child.

He did not like to plan, but he did not like to miss things either. His secretary, accompanying him and (for a while) keeping his journal for him, remarked that people in the party complained about Montaigne's habit of straying from the path whenever he heard of extra things he wanted to see. But Montaigne would say it was impossible to stray from the path: there was was no path. The only plan he had ever committed himself to was that of traveling in unknown places. So long as he did not repeat a route, he was following this plan to the letter. no path. The only plan he had ever committed himself to was that of traveling in unknown places. So long as he did not repeat a route, he was following this plan to the letter.

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The one limit to his energy was that he never liked to start out too early. "My laziness in getting up gives my attendants time to dine at their ease before starting." This accorded with his usual habit, for he always had trouble getting under way in the mornings. On the whole, however, he made a point of shaking up his habits while traveling. Unlike other travelers, he ate only local food and had himself served in the local style. At one point in the trip he regretted that he had not brought his cook with him-not because he missed home cooking, but because he wanted the cook to learn new foreign recipes.

He blushed to see other Frenchmen overcome with joy whenever they met a compatriot abroad. They would fall on each other, cl.u.s.ter in a raucous group, and pa.s.s whole evenings complaining about the barbarity of the locals. These were the few who actually noticed that locals did things differently. Others managed to travel so "covered and wrapped in a taciturn and incommunicative prudence, defending themselves from the contagion of an unknown atmosphere" that they noticed nothing at all. In the journal, the secretary observed how far Montaigne himself would err in the other direction, showering exaggerated praise on whichever country they were in while having nary a good word to say for his own. "In truth there entered into his judgment a bit of pa.s.sion, a certain scorn for his country," wrote the secretary, and added his own speculation that Montaigne's aversion from all things French came from "other considerations"-perhaps a reference to the wars.

His adaptability extended to language. In Italy, he spoke in Italian and even kept his journal in that language, taking over from the secretary. He imitated the chameleon, or octopus, and tried to pa.s.s incognito wherever possible-or what he thought was incognito. In Augsburg, wrote the secretary, "Monsieur de Montaigne, for some reason, wanted our party to dissemble and not tell their ranks; and he walked unattended all day long through the town." It did not work. Sitting on a pew in freezing air in Augsburg's church, Montaigne found his nose running and unthinkingly took out a handkerchief. But handkerchiefs were not used in this area, so he blew his cover along with his nose. Was there a bad smell around? the local people wondered. Or was he afraid of catching something? In any case, they had already guessed he was a stranger: his style of dressing gave him away. Montaigne found this irksome. For once, "he had fallen into the fault that he most avoided, that of making himself noticeable by some mannerism at variance with the taste of those who saw him."

Churches played an important part in Montaigne's tour, not because he was addicted to prayer, but because he was so curious about their practices. He observed the Protestant churches of Germany with as much interest as the Catholic ones of Italy. In Augsburg, he witnessed the christening of a child. On the way out (having already been unmasked as a stranger) he asked many questions about the process. In Italy, he visited synagogues, and "had quite a talk with them about their ceremonies." He also observed a Jewish circ.u.mcision, in a private house.

Odd events and human narratives of all kinds appealed to him. In the early stages of the trip, in Plombieres-les-Bains in Lorraine, he met a soldier who had a half-white beard and one white eyebrow. The man told Montaigne that both had changed color in a single day when his brother died, because he wept for hours with a hand covering one side of his face. Nearby, in Vitry-le-Francois, he was regaled with stories about seven or eight girls in the area who had "plotted together" to dress and live as men. One married a woman and lived with her for several months-"to her satisfaction, so they say"-until someone reported the case to the authorities and she was hanged. Another story in the same region concerned a man named Germain who had been a girl until the age of twenty-two, when a set of "virile instruments" popped out one day as he leaped over an obstacle. A folk song arose in the town, warning girls not to open their legs too wide when they jumped in case the same thing happened to them.

Montaigne was fascinated by differences in eating habits-always an obvious point of cultural comparison for any traveler. In Switzerland, goblets were refilled with wine from a distance using a long-beaked vessel, and, after the meat course, everyone tossed their plates into a basket in the middle of the table. People ate with knives, "hardly ever put their hands into the dish," and had minuscule napkins only six inches square, despite their liking for messy sauces and soups. More strangeness awaited in Swiss bedrooms: "Their beds are raised so high that commonly you climb into them by steps; and almost everywhere they have little beds under the big ones."

Everything engaged Montaigne's attention, or that of his secretary, who was writing at his direction. At an inn in Lindau, a cage full of birds ran along one entire wall of the dining room, with alleyways and bra.s.s wires so that the birds could hop from one end of the room to the other. In Augsburg, they met a group taking two ostriches on leashes as presents to the duke of Saxony. Montaigne also noticed, in that city, that "they dust their gla.s.sware with a hair-duster attached to the end of a stick." And he was intrigued by the city's multiple remote-controlled gates, which closed off chambers in turn like locks in a ca.n.a.l, so that aggressors could not force their way through.

Everywhere they went, they visited fashionable fountains and water gardens, good for hours of s.a.d.i.s.tic entertainment. In the gardens of the Fugger family in Germany, a wooden walkway leading between two fishponds concealed bra.s.s jets primed to spray unsuspecting ladies and gentlemen as they pa.s.sed. Elsewhere in the same garden, you could press a b.u.t.ton to shoot a spout of water into the face of anyone who looked at a particular fountain. A Latin sign in the garden read, "You were looking for trifling amus.e.m.e.nts; here they are; enjoy them." Apparently Montaigne's party did.

Great art seemed to impress Montaigne less, or at least he says little about it, only occasionally commenting on such works as the "very beautiful and excellent statues by Michelangelo" in Florence. The Essays Essays also contain little about visual art. He filled his tower with frescos, so must have had some taste for pictures, yet he seems to have had little desire to write about them-although the paint was barely dry on so much Renaissance art throughout Italy. also contain little about visual art. He filled his tower with frescos, so must have had some taste for pictures, yet he seems to have had little desire to write about them-although the paint was barely dry on so much Renaissance art throughout Italy.

This omission was held against him by some later readers of the journal, especially the Romantics, who became its first audience, for the ma.n.u.script turned up in a trunk at the chateau only in 1772. Readers fell on the discovery with excitement, but emerged disappointed with what they found there. Along with a better appreciation of art, eighteenth-century readers would have liked sublime gushings about the beauty of the Alps, and melancholy meditations on the ruins of Rome. Instead, they got a record of Montaigne's urinary blockages interspersed with closely observed, piquant, but non-sublime details about the inns, food, technology, manners, and social practices at each stop. People were less than enthralled to learn, from the secretary, that "the water that Monsieur de Montaigne drank on Tuesday caused him three stools," and that two days later another dose of spa water was effective "both in front and behind." They were no happier when Montaigne himself took over the diary-writing and told them that he had voided a stone "as big and long as a pine nut, but as thick as a bean at one end, and having, to tell the truth, exactly the shape of a p.r.i.c.k." The only thing which Swiss and German readers, at least, could enjoy was the fact that the journal was also full of compliments about their lands, especially the well-designed stoves of the Swiss.

The muted response to the work by its first audience seems to have set the tone for its reception ever since; it has always been regarded as a poor cousin to the Essays Essays. Yet it makes for a better read than any number of overblown Romantic travelogues, precisely because it remains so tied to detail. It has little beds under big beds, messy Swiss sauces, room-sized birdcages, circ.u.mcisions, s.e.x changes, and ostriches: what's not to like?

Another appealing feature of the journal is that it allows the secretary to give us a portrait of Montaigne from the outside-a portrait which turns out to be remarkably consistent with the self-reflective Montaigne of the Essays Essays. The reader sees Montaigne exerting himself to shake off all national prejudices, just as one might expect him to. He seems enthusiastic and full of curiosity, but sometimes also selfish, dragging his grumbling entourage off to places they could see no point in visiting. There is even the odd hint that he waffled too much in formal orations, despite (or perhaps because of) his lack of interest in them. In Basel, after Montaigne was subjected to "a long welcoming speech" at dinner, the secretary writes that he gave an equally "long reply." And in Schaffhausen, Montaigne was presented with a gift of wine-"not without several ceremonious speeches on both sides."

There were fewer demands on Montaigne's oratorical powers once they reached Italy, which they did on October 28, 1580. Yet, the closer they came to it, the more he questioned how much he really wanted to go there. This was the the great destination, the center of European culture; Venice and Rome had called to him all his life. But he now discovered that he preferred less well known places. Had Montaigne had his way, remarked the secretary as they reached the Alps, he might have turned towards Poland or Greece instead, perhaps just to prolong the whole trip. But he met with opposition, and so agreed to follow the Italy route like everyone else. He soon recovered. "I never saw him less tired or complaining less of his pains," wrote the secretary now, "for his mind was so intent on what he encountered, both on the road and at his lodgings, and he was so eager on all occasions to talk to strangers, that I think this took his mind off his ailment." great destination, the center of European culture; Venice and Rome had called to him all his life. But he now discovered that he preferred less well known places. Had Montaigne had his way, remarked the secretary as they reached the Alps, he might have turned towards Poland or Greece instead, perhaps just to prolong the whole trip. But he met with opposition, and so agreed to follow the Italy route like everyone else. He soon recovered. "I never saw him less tired or complaining less of his pains," wrote the secretary now, "for his mind was so intent on what he encountered, both on the road and at his lodgings, and he was so eager on all occasions to talk to strangers, that I think this took his mind off his ailment."

Venice, one of their first major Italian stops, confirmed his fears about overpopular tourist destinations. As the secretary put it, he found it slightly less wonderful than people said it would be. Still, he explored it with no lack of zest, hiring a gondola and meeting all the interesting people he could find, and he was won over by Venice's bizarre geography, its cosmopolitan population, and its government as an independent republic. It seemed to have some special political magic that other places lacked, engaging in conflicts only when it had something to gain, and maintaining a just government within its own boundaries. Montaigne was also impressed by the way the city's courtesans lived in dignity and luxury, openly maintained by n.o.blemen and respected by all. He met one of the most famous, Veronica Franco, who had recently survived trial at the hands of the Inquisition and had published a book of correspondence, the Lettere familiari e diversi Lettere familiari e diversi, which she personally presented to Montaigne.

After Venice, they traveled through Ferrara, where Montaigne met Ta.s.so, then Bologna, where they watched a fencing demonstration, and Florence, where they visited trick gardens with seats that squirted water at your bottom when you sat down. In another garden, the party "had the very amusing experience" of being squirted with water from "an infinite number of tiny holes," so as to form a shower so fine it was almost a mist.

They carried on, getting ever closer to Rome. On the last day before reaching the city, November 3, 1580, Montaigne was so excited that, for once, he made everyone get up three hours before dawn to travel the last few miles. The road through the outskirts was not promising, all humps and clefts and potholes, but as they went on they glimpsed the first few ruins, and, at last, the great city itself.

The thrill palled a little as they waited to get through the bureaucracy at the gate; their baggage was searched "down to the smallest articles." The officials spent an inordinate amount of time examining Montaigne's books. Rome was the domain of the Pope himself: thought crimes were taken seriously here. They confiscated a book of hours, simply because it was published in Paris rather than Rome, and some Catholic theological works which Montaigne had picked up in Germany. He considered himself lucky that he was not carrying anything more incriminating. Having been unprepared for such a rigorous inspection, he could easily have had truly heretical books on him, since, as the secretary remarked, he was of such an "inquiring nature."

Also taken away for examination was a copy of his own Essays Essays. This was not returned to him until March, four months later, and it came back with suggested amendments marked in it. The word "fortune" was flagged up in several places, with other odds and ends. But a Church official later told him that the objections were not serious, and that the French friar who had made them was not even particularly competent. "It seemed to me that I left them well pleased with me," wrote Montaigne in the journal. He duly ignored all the suggestions. Some writers have made much of Montaigne's defiance of the Inquisition, but he did not have to be a Galileo to stand his ground.

Still, these encounters got Montaigne off to a bad start with Rome; he felt its atmosphere was intolerant. Yet it was also cosmopolitan. To be a Roman was to be a citizen of the world, which was what Montaigne wanted to be. He accordingly sought Roman citizenship, an honor which was granted towards the end of his four-and-a-half-month stay. This pleased him so much that he transcribed the doc.u.ment in its entirety in a chapter about vanity in the Essays Essays. He realized that "vanity" was the right category, but he did not care. "At all events I received much pleasure in having obtained it."

Rome was so vast and varied that there seemed no limit to the things you could do there. Montaigne could hear sermons or theological disputations. He could visit the Vatican library and, being granted access to areas that had been closed even to the French amba.s.sador, see precious ma.n.u.script copies of works by his heroes Seneca and Plutarch. He could watch a circ.u.mcision, visit gardens and vineyards, and talk to prost.i.tutes. He tried to learn all the latter's trade secrets, but learned only that they charged a great deal even for conversation, which presumably was was one of their secrets. one of their secrets.

Besides the prost.i.tutes, Montaigne also had an audience with the current octogenarian Pope, Gregory XIII. The secretary described the ritual in detail. First Montaigne and one of his young traveling companions entered the room where the Pope was seated, and knelt to receive a benediction. They sidled along the wall, then cut across towards him; halfway there, they stopped for another benediction. Then they knelt on a velvet carpet at the Pope's feet, beside the French amba.s.sador, who was presenting them. The amba.s.sador knelt too, and pulled back the Pope's robe to expose his right foot, shod in a red slipper with a white cross. The visitors each bent towards this foot and kissed it; Montaigne noted that the Pope lifted his toes a little to make the kiss easier. After this almost erotic performance, the amba.s.sador covered the papal foot again, and rose to deliver a speech about the visitors. The Pope blessed them and said a few words, urging Montaigne to continue in his devotion to the Church. Then he rose to signal their dismissal; they retraced their route across the room in reverse, never turning their backs, and stopping twice to kneel for more benedictions. At last they backed out of the door, and the performance was over. Montaigne had his secretary note, later, that the Pope had spoken with a Bologna accent-"the worst idiom in Italy." He was "a very handsome old man, of middle height, erect, his face full of majesty, a long white beard, more than eighty years old, as healthy and vigorous for his age as anyone can wish, without gout, without colic, without stomach trouble"-quite different from poor suffering Montaigne, and having a sort of family resemblance to G.o.d himself. He seemed "of a gentle nature, not very pa.s.sionate about the affairs of the world," which is either very like or very unlike G.o.d, depending on your point of view. Gentle or not, this was the same Pope who had once struck medals and commissioned paintings to celebrate the St. Bartholomew's ma.s.sacre.

There was no forgetting that Rome was the Pope's city. Montaigne often saw him conducting ceremonies and taking part in processions. In Holy Week, he watched thousands of people pouring towards St. Peter's, carrying torches and scourging themselves with ropes, some as young as twelve or thirteen years old. They were accompanied by men carrying wine, which they sipped and blew over the ends of the scourges to wet the cords and separate them when they became clotted with blood. "This is an enigma that I do not yet well understand," wrote Montaigne. The penitents were cruelly wounded, yet they seemed neither to feel pain nor to be entirely serious about what they were doing. They drank plenty of wine themselves and performed the rite "with such nonchalance that you see them talk with one another about other matters, laugh, yell in the street, run, and jump." As he deduced, most of them were doing it for money: the pious rich had paid them to go through the penance process for them. This mystified him even more: "What do those who hire them do it for, if it is only a counterfeit?"

Montaigne also witnessed an exorcism. The possessed man, who seemed almost comatose, was held down at the altar while the priest beat him with his fists, spat in his face, and shouted at him. Another day, he saw a man hanged: a famous robber and bandit named Catena, whose victims had included two Capuchin monks. Apparently he had promised to spare their lives if they denied G.o.d; they did so, risking the loss of their eternal souls, but Catena killed them anyway. Of all the twists Montaigne had yet encountered on the kind of scene that so fascinated him-the vanquished individual who begs for mercy, the victor who decides whether to grant it-this was probably the most unpleasant. At least Catena himself had the courage to die bravely. He made not a sound as he was seized and strangled; then his body was cut into quarters with swords. The crowd were more agitated by the violence done to the dead body, howling at every blow of the sword, than by the execution itself: another phenomenon which puzzled Montaigne, who thought living cruelty more disturbing than anything that could be done to a corpse.

All these were the marvels of modern Rome, but that was not why most sixteenth-century tourists of a humanistic disposition came to the city. They came to absorb the aura of the ancients, and none was more susceptible to this aura than Montaigne, who was almost a native himself. Latin was, after all, his first language; Rome was his home country.

The cla.s.sical city was very much in evidence all around them, though, for the most part, Montaigne and his secretary did not so much walk in in the Romans' footsteps as far above them. So much earth and rubble had built up over the centuries that the ground level had risen by several meters. What remained of the ancient buildings was buried like boots in mud. Montaigne marveled at the realization that he was often on the tops of old walls, something that became obvious only in spots where rain erosion or the wheel ruts uncovered glimpses of them. "It has often happened," he wrote with a shiver of glee, "that after digging deep down into the ground people would come merely down to the head of a very high column which was still standing down below." the Romans' footsteps as far above them. So much earth and rubble had built up over the centuries that the ground level had risen by several meters. What remained of the ancient buildings was buried like boots in mud. Montaigne marveled at the realization that he was often on the tops of old walls, something that became obvious only in spots where rain erosion or the wheel ruts uncovered glimpses of them. "It has often happened," he wrote with a shiver of glee, "that after digging deep down into the ground people would come merely down to the head of a very high column which was still standing down below."

This is much less the case today. Excavation has since freed most of the ruins down to their ankles again, and some have been rea.s.sembled. Today, the Arch of Severus soars into the air; in Montaigne's day, only the upper part of it emerged. The Colosseum was then a jumble of stone overgrown by weeds. Medieval and early modern buildings had also grown over everything; people built on top of ruins or recycled old materials for new constructions. Slabs of stone kept being repositioned at higher levels, to patch up walls or to form shanties. Some areas had been cleared completely to make way for triumphalist projects such as the brand-new church of St. Peter's. Roman history did not lie in neat strata; it had been repeatedly churned up and rearranged as if by earthquakes.

The result was atmospheric, but it created an impression of ancient Rome to about the extent that a scrambled egg puts one in mind of a freshly laid whole one. In fact, modern Rome had been formed by a similar process to the one Montaigne used to write his Essays Essays. Ceaselessly adding quotations and allusions, he recycled his cla.s.sical reading as the Romans recycled their stone. The similarity seems to have occurred to him, and he once called his book a building a.s.sembled from the spoils of Seneca and Plutarch. In the city, as with his book, he thought creative bricolage and imperfection preferable to a sterile orderliness, and took pleasure in contemplating the result. It also required a certain mental effort, which brought further satisfaction. The experience of Rome that resulted was mainly the product of one's own imagination. One might almost as well have stayed at home-almost, for there was still something unique about being there.

Such a feeling of hallucinatory strangeness frequently strikes visitors to Rome, partly because everything there is already so familiar to the imagination long before you see it. Two hundred years later, Goethe would find it at once exhilarating and disorienting. "All the dreams of my youth have come to life," he wrote on his arrival. "The first engravings I remember-my father hung views of Rome in the hall-I now see in reality, and everything I have known for so long through paintings, drawings, etchings, woodcuts, plaster casts, and cork models is now a.s.sembled before me." Something similar happened to Freud in Athens when he saw the Acropolis. "So all this really does exist, just as we learned at school!" he exclaimed, and almost immediately thereafter felt the conviction: "What I see here is not real." Montaigne found this meeting between inner and outer versions strange, too, writing of "the Rome and Paris that I have in my soul," which were "without size and without place, without stone, without plaster, and without wood." They were dream-images which he compared to the dream-hare chased by his dog.

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Rome would bring Goethe an almost mystical peace: "I am now in a state of clarity and calm such as I had not known for a long time." Montaigne felt this too; despite its touristic frustrations, Italy in general had this effect on him. "I enjoyed a tranquil mind," he wrote a little later, in Lucca. But he added: "I felt only one lack, that of company that I liked, being forced to enjoy these good things alone and without communication."

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Eventually leaving Rome on April 19, 1581, Montaigne crossed the Apennines and headed for the great pilgrimage site of Loreto, joining the crowd pouring in procession behind banners and crucifixes. He left votive figures in the church there, for himself and for his wife and daughter. Then he continued up the Adriatic coast and back across the mountains to a spa at La Villa, where he stayed for over a month to try the waters. As was expected of a visiting n.o.bleman, he hosted parties for locals and fellow guests, including a dance "for the peasant girls" in which he partic.i.p.ated himself "so as not to appear too reserved." He returned to La Villa after a detour to Florence and Lucca, and stayed through the height of the summer, from August 14 to September 12, 1581. His pain from the stone was bad, and he came down with toothache, a heaviness in the head, and aching eyes. He suspected that these were the fault of the waters, which ravaged his upper half even as they helped the bottom half, a.s.suming that they even did that. "I began to find these baths unpleasant."

Then, unexpectedly, he was called away. Montaigne, who claimed to want only a quiet life and the chance to pursue his "honest curiosity" around Europe, was issued with a long-distance invitation which he could not refuse.

15. Q. How to live? A. Do a good job, but not too good a job